This post helped me win first-place in Kelly Balarie’s Fear Fighting Writing Contest in March 2017. I won a meeting with a literary agent. Thank you to the over 350 people who cast votes for me in the contest!

I used to be haunted by a recurring dream.  Running and stumbling in a desert valley at dusk, alone and weary.  Desperate to find a hiding place before night settled, but not knowing where to turn.  Someone or something was hunting me.  Something fierce and deadly.   I knew it, but I couldn’t see it.  My faceless enemy pursued me and I had to keep running as fast as I could, panting and whimpering all the way.

Childhood fears

Fear was my hunter.  The fear of abandonment, in particular.  Fear gripped me the day my daddy left when I was four, huddled on my bed and crying, laying the first bricks of protection for the walls in my heart.  That fear held on tight for thirty-three more Aprils.